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Kunstjournalen B-post 2008

Art as Notions of the Impossible Made Possible?

Editiorial

i

The point of departure for this issue of Kunstjournalen
B-post is an idiom; imagine the impossible made
possible. This expression led to a set of questions which were
sent to selected artist and theoreticians. One of the questions we
asked was to what extent central aspects of today’s artworks articulate
themselves in the tensions between the visionary as utopia and the
visionary as dystopia. We also asked if the expression can be perceived
as arts’ job description.

ii

In a world tailored to inducing anxiety for the future and
uncertainty about our common judgment, a world where public values are
disseminated and entrusted to the private sphere and where it appears
that the ruthless win, it is easy to present a dystopic perspective as
both irrefutable and unavoidable.

iii

Parallel to strategies exploring negation, we also find art entering
social and political spheres of action through direct criticism and
proposals for alternative solutions. It look as if large portions of
the art world have embraced the challenge by opening fissures in the
naturalized order and giving us a glimpse of “something else” behind as
a realizable alternative; in other words articulating hope.

iv

The contributions which follow constitute a spectrum of experience,
claims and reflections in pictures and words. The difference between
them lies in individual approaches and methods, but is also in the fact
that they are projects in different phases of realization. Some of the
invited contributors were encouraged to develop an artistic
contribution especially for Kunstjournalen B-post, others were
encouraged to present an existing work, others again were asked to
write. The contributions which came did not always follow these
divisions. In relation to exploring notions of the (im)possible, clear
divisions between backgrounds, documentation, theoretical reflections,
presentations, utopian plans and artwork are not always so clearly
delineated.

.

v

The possible is the realistic, visible and graspable. It is what
there is and what means something. It is what one has to choose
between: the area of the everyday, the routine and the political. The
impossible – the not-possible – does not exist at the behest of the
possible, or; it represents the possible’s (im)possible transgression;
the possibility that tomorrow has other possibilities than today.

vi

The possible, it turns out, occasionally reaches beyond what we can
imagine.

vii

As we write, the world is experiencing a “slow motion financial
crash” where modes of thinking underlying the crash are collapsing.
Dagens Næringsliv (a Norwegian newspaper similar to Financial
Times) claims in a commentary on October 11th 2008 that “the
unthinkable can happen” and that in reality the actual risk for
collapse is beyond theoretical elucidation.

viii

“The impossible made possible” has the feel of a paradox beyond
imagination. However if the possible and the impossible are considered
relative to time and place, this expression points to a continuing
exchange between imagination and reality. With this the expression
touches the depths of the human condition.

ix

For the arts this can indicate a focus on the heterogeneous, the
manifold, the unclear as well as the ambivalent – both in production
and reception. The challenge is to remain open – for insignificant as
well as nearly trivial alternatives.

x

Or to ask a new question: How does it look, the foggy landscape just
outside of that which we consider possible, where experience and
hypotheses collide? And what remains after the collision?

Sissel Lillebostad og Arne Rygg

(English translation: Deirdre Smith)

The content of this issue has not been translated. Click
the flag above to the right to browse the Norwegian
version.